I am not sure I agree that Teachers have absolutely exhausting jobs - much more so than most jobs - as said by man on r4 this morning

[RevolutionHere]

i am not sure what my dh, former welder would make of this statement

this is an argument regarding long summer holidays,

I think what non teachers don’t understand is that teaching shouldn’t be as hard as it. In many countries it’s a fairly normal job. In the independent sector it can be a lovely job. But between Ofsted, under funded inclusion needs, endless teaching bashing like many of the posts in this thread and the consistant underfunding, teaching in this country is broken and part of the exhaustion teachers face is working in a system that is failing both them and many of the children they teach.

I understand that but I wonder how you would feel if you’d repeatedly told someone/everyone something was hard/challenging/tiring and people with no experience of that thing kept telling you to stop complaining because you have it easy. It can feel incredibly frustrating so people end up getting angry. Teachers aren’t angry, bitter people - the profession naturally appeals to pretty patient, kind/caring people - but they are sick of inexperienced people judging them.

I also wonder what your hopes were for this thread - the title immediately puts teachers on the defensive/ your wording welcomes defensive comments. I know you’re quoting a R4 discussion but you also put your own opinion in there. What interesting or intelligent comments were you thinking might come up? Would they be from teachers finding yet another way of saying yes it is really hard or other people commenting on a profession they have no experience of?

@BlackCatGreyWhiskers the teachers leaving at 4.30pm are probably putting their own kids to bed and then opening the laptop at 8pm to do another few hours' work. My children are teenagers so they walk themselves to school and home. I prefer to get my work done early in the day and straight after school so I can spend time with them in the evening. They go to bed later than me 😆

@Kuretake
Yes it is common for teachers! When my DC were small I got into school at 7:30am (their dad dropped them to breakfast club) collected them at 5pm from after school club but would be working again in the evenings once they had been fed etc. If I had to take them to hobbies or clubs then I would quite often be working until 10:30/11pm in the evening. Just because you see teachers picking up their kids don’t assume they’ve finished work for the day!

It depends.

What I have noticed from teachers who say they don't do that much extra work is that they've totally underestimated what they actually do do tonget the work done. They still have the same professional responsibilities to fulfill.

It also depends on the size of the class, whether you're secondary or primary, the subject you teach, your school"s commitment to staff well being, the needs of the children/families in your school, the demographics of the local area, how well resourced the school is, what expectations are placed on teachers by the school that aren't compliant with the Burgundy Book but that no one has time to actually consult because of work or how supportive SLT are, whether your school keeps up to date with pedagogical changes, the demands of your subject, curriculum changes etc.

Eg I have a colleague works 7.30am-6pm at school every day. She rarely takes work home. I do 8am - 5pm most days but I prefer to take work home and work through a Sunday and I'm happy to devote more days to working through the school holidays too. We still have the same workload, we jsit manage it differently. It also depends on whether you have a subject leader responsibility and how many subjects you lead, whether your school has subject teams or whether it's just down to one person.

We each find a different way of making it work for us but the workload won't be any different. It's just how different people manage it that is.

I have worked in many jobs. I have also been the daughter of a manual worker who worked nights and overtime to keep the family fed and housed. I know the toll such work takes on people. I also know that when my father was working thus, being a teacher was a much nicer option. The trouble is, it isn't any more, perhaps because of the break-down of families, the break-down of any respect for lawful authority, child-centred education, the fads of not properly teaching children to read (so they are disruptive because they can't read and thus cannot learn). Teaching may not be the physical graft of welding but it is certainly up there with the psychological stress. Why do you think so many new teachers leave the profession within five years and go to jobs that have fewer holidays? Stress is why.
Glad you think not quite getting my neck broken was not worth a comment.

@PinkBobby
an appreciation for other hard working exhausting professions

I totally agree with this. Which then impacts on how you relate to your family and the use you can make of the time you're not actually working - and your sleep, come to that!
Should say this isn't the case every single day, but there have been long periods for me when that is how I've felt.

No, most of their holidays are not spent doing this.

I have lived (still live!) with teachers. They all dedicate some of their holiday time to catching up/prepping for the next term. Nothing like most of it.

Oh give it a rest OP. You started a thread based on something a teacher said when shortening their holidays was being discussed on the radio. In that context, why would a comment about how hard welders or anyone else works be made?

I agree.

It would be different if this thread's opening gambit was a little more diplomatic, e.g. "Teaching is an exhausting profession - but so too are other professions. Discuss". Instead, it's been framed in such a way as to suggest that teachers / those defending teachers are wrong to say it's an 'absolutely exhausting' profession. Naturally, this is going to get those on Mumsnet who are teachers (like me) arguing otherwise - no right-minded teacher is going to post that teaching is a walk in the park in the current climate. However, from what I've read of this thread so far, very few of us are arguing it's the single-most exhausting profession, either.

It's difficult to know what the OP wanted from this thread: consensus that teaching is not the most difficult job in the world? Consensus that teaching is an easy job? Multiple posts saying "my non-teaching job is so much tougher than teaching"? I'm struggling to see how useful a thread / discussion that would be when it's all based on subjective, personal experience of the posters, though.

Or not manage it. I know that DD’s teacher who at the last parents evening had no idea who she was or even what form she was in, who looked for the first time at her book and was impressed at the quality and quantity of her work and (unmarked ) homework, who said he can’t manage behaviour and doesn’t like disciplining kids, who said it’s down to her to put her head down and focus and do the work(she does), who gave her a target to improve grammar in a paper with absolutely no SPAG mistakes, doesn’t work as hard or as much as her History, Maths , Science , Geography etc. teachers.

Yes that might be so - but so are the parents collecting so I don’t think that’s unique to teachers.

I can appreciate other people work hard without criticising one sub set??

i made no criticism

Because people with limited understanding of the world outside of their own ill informed opinions/imagination keep starting threads like this!

It does grate on me a bit that the suggestion is they continue to work similar hours to term time. If that was the case nursery term time only hours wouldn’t exist!

How much are teachers paid? So average, qualified primary school teacher?

It's not. It just explains why teachers might be seen doing that.

The difference is that no one questions why other people are picking their children up at certain times or whether they'll continue to work later.

No.one gives it a second thought!

To be clear - I don’t question it either, I am satisfied my son’s school has staff who can manage their time and deliver what’s expected of them. I was more just making an observation.

oh that's pleasant

"For some reason teachers seem to think they have it the hardest."

Can you back this up with some direct quotes from teachers who have said this?

I wouldn't comment on a welder's workload and exhaustion levels *because I have never been a welder, Nor do I know anything much about it."
Therefore, OP, as you have never been a teacher, you know nothing about how exhausting it may or may not be.

So yes, ill-informed.

Teacher pay scales are publicly available if you search online.

lt was neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Just a statement of fact.

When people.start threads like these about teachers, teachers will respond and explain.

That creates the impression that teachers are always going on about it or people are always discussing teaching and not other professions.

People might start threads about other jobs after a particularly unpleasant experience with an individual nurse, retail worker, carer, customer service representative, builder whatever or a particular frustration with a service but they don't tend to start threads deriding entire professions in the way they do with teaching.

You don’t seem to have much insight into the pressures and demands of what is involved in teaching though, despite many many posters telling you how exhausting it is 🤦‍♀️ I would tend to agree with @StillAGoth